New Applications to Optimize Production (Panhandle Plays)

New Applications to Optimize Production
Jerry Greenberg
Panhandle Plays – June 16, 2012

A company can improve its decision-making skills and lower well construction costs by providing more accurate and precise downhole data to the operator, sometimes in near real time. Oilfield service companies are beginning to offer scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to more accurately characterize and analyze mineralogy, porosity, and permeability of shales.

Some of the SEM technologies being examined for use in the oil field are being adapted from other industries. One company has developed a portable SEM that can be used at the rig site, providing mineralogy and lithology datasets usually within an hour. Another company has been offering extremely high-resolution digital imaging of cores, plugs, and drill cuttings that can be viewed on the geologist’s computer screen and examined with a host of virtual microscopes.

Still another company recently entered the oil and gas industry after providing SEM services for pharmaceuticals, material analysis, forensic science, paints and coatings, and failure analysis.

The tools being used in today’s oil field can determine rock brittleness to optimally locate lateral well bores and then enable the most productive stimulation program.